Friday, November 26, 2010

Thanksgiving update!

Well, I've begun to add color to selective areas. I thought if I added an ocher overtone to the sleeves, I could soften the modeling there and start bringing the sleeves closer to completion. I've also started adding the landscape in the background. The reddish hue in the lower right of the landscape is a fairly unfinished area in the actual painting, having not progressed much beyond what I've painted in so far. I'm thinking that once the background is a little further along, then I can work the figure more. All my painting is very transparent at this point. Any imperfection in the lower layers is apparent in surface of the piece. I'll have to continue adjusting and softening blends and adding in all the myriad of subtle tones Leonardo painted in.

I've also begun the hero painting! I haven't done much, as you can see. I'm also starting it out differently than the other piece, using washes of black, rather than the umber I used for the previous panel. I'm intending to do a complete greyscale painting first, and add all my colors in after. The Book by Daniel Thompson talks about painting a graduated blue sky over a greyscale underpainting in tempera, and I thought I'd try that, to see what effect that gives.

I also recently found a nice, high-resolution picture of the frame, which has allowed me to draw up a blueprint of the celtic knot pattern for future use. I'm seriously contemplating carving the frame and doing it as "old school" as possible as well.....